


Endgame

by McEnchilada



Category: Father Brown (2013)
Genre: Chess, First Kiss, Fluff, Get Together, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Religion, Roman Catholicism, there's some monologuing but they get there in the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-06-29 22:08:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15738285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/McEnchilada/pseuds/McEnchilada
Summary: Getting distracted during chess is nothing unusual, but tonight, they find something new to talk about.





	Endgame

Chess had never been Flambeau’s favorite way to match wits. He didn’t see that there was any sport in a game with such uncompromising rules, or which depended on predicting ones’ opponents moves in advance. After all, most people were so predictable that the novelty wore off in minutes. There were very few who had the capacity to surprise him, and those he preferred to meet on more exciting fields than a game board.

Still, it seemed the thing to do on a quiet evening at a presbytery. Father Brown invited him over often, nearly every night that there was no ecclesiastical business to attend to. They played chess, listened to the wireless and, usually, ended up in a philosophical debate, the board entirely forgotten. It helped that Brown was even worse than the game than he was; Flambeau suspected that, like him, the priest’s attention wandered too often from the pieces moving about by rote.

One such night, Flambeau was recounting the tale of a theft he’d performed early in his career. He’d stolen a famed hotel’s finest silver, by the laughably simple means of convincing the guests that he was a waiter, and the waiters, a guest. 

It was almost embarrassing to tell the story now, after decades of honing his skills. It was like asking a great painter to show off the sketchbooks they’d filled out as a child. He’d certainly shown promise, but there had been no refinement, no finesse. Had Brown been there, he would undoubtedly have seen through the charade in a minute. But his method and his prize had both been so harmless that he could tell Brown about them without fear of much reprimand, and he thought that he would even enjoy hearing about it.

As he’d expected, the story made Brown laugh, to Flambeau’s secret delight. Brown was never a man of guile or particular reserve, but he did tend to conduct himself with the staidness that befit a pillar of the community. Only when the two of them were alone did he allow himself to relax in a way that Flambeau was sure few others in Kembleford had ever seen, and he cherished the intimacy it spoke of.

“They never suspected? Oh, dear,” Brown chuckled, moving a pawn forward a step. “And all it took was a dining jacket.”

Flambeau smirked. “As I said, there’s no greater fool than a gentleman.”

He thought that Brown might disagree with him, charitable as ever, but he only gave a wry smile. “And so a thief was born,” he said, with some drama.

“Technically,” Flambeau pointed out, as he captured a knight with his rook, “my first foray into the profession was years earlier. I believe I told you about the bicycle?”

“Yes, you did.” Brown frowned pensively down at the board, either strategizing or preparing a lecture. Flambeau prayed it was the former. In the months that he’d been staying in Kembleford, they’d established an unspoken truce: Brown didn’t sermonize, unless Flambeau really deserved it, and Flambeau didn’t discredit the church and everything it stood for, unless he was especially irritable. So far, it was working out very well.

Brown was a priest, however; he could no more refrain from moralizing than Inspector Mallory could from asking annoying questions. After a few moments of contemplation, in which Flambeau lost a knight and Brown a pawn, Brown asked, “Do you.... You say you don’t regret your choice of career, but you must consider what else your life might have been.”

Flambeau snorted. His remaining knight stepped forward to menace a bishop, which Brown obediently shuffled backwards. “What else it might have been?”

“An honest life.”

“You overestimate how much honesty it ever might have had.” He took a sip of the surprisingly fine wine they were sharing. The presbytery didn’t have a cellar of its own, but Brown seemed to have an endless supply of excellent vintages gifted to him by his many and varied friends. Honestly, Flambeau probably wasn’t even the strangest company he kept. “My father, you know, died in the war. My mother, widowed at twenty. No other family for either of us. We barely survived on what she made as a laundress. I don’t believe I owned a new pair of shoes until I was sixteen, and those I stole the money for. I attended the village school with the other sorry orphans of war, whose prospects, like mine, were to scrape by in the same village our ancestors had.”

“A provincial life isn’t a bad one,” Brown chided, ever so gently. Flambeau did forget, sometimes, that Brown had been born not fifty miles from where they sat, had attended school and seminary in the same county. Without the wars he’d served in, he might have lived his entire life not journeying further than London. To him, the little villages and rural simplicity of Gloucestershire were home.

Flambeau, meanwhile, had run off to Paris as soon as he’d been able to, and had never been back. “It wasn’t enough for me. There was a world to see. There were things I wanted. I would never have been happy.”

Brown let out a quiet, satisfied “Ha!” as he captured an idle pawn, but then sobered again. “There were paths you could have taken, other than crime. There always are.”

“Not always.” 

He charged forward with his queen, recklessly and perhaps suicidally. If the game ended, he could make his excuses and leave, and no longer be subject to Brown’s remonstrance. He _didn’t_ regret his life of crime, and he never would. What good would it do anyway? He couldn’t live his life over, and he wouldn’t care to, if it meant not haivng the money and the means to have whatever he wanted. Brown might be content with his undemanding, undecorated life, but Flambeau had never known that kind of satisfaction. He was always driven to have more, to do better. And as far as he remembered, ambition wasn’t in itself a sin.

Brown was giving him a pursed-lip look of disapproval for his contradiction. Flambeau sighed. “You’re far too optimistic, Father. You think there’s _always_ a choice? What if the choice is between theft, or starvation? Or if a woman must choose between her virtue, or her child’s life? Hardly a fair choice, if it is one. Few of us will choose to preserve our immortal souls over our mortal bodies.”

“I don’t believe you took the Lannington rosary because you were starving.” 

Flambeau thought Brown was _trying_ not to scold. Accordingly, Flambeau tried not to look as annoyed as he was feeling.

“No. But nor did I take it from anyone who needed it. I’m a villain, but not a brigand. You’ll notice I steal only from those who can afford it.”

Brown smiled, small and perhaps somewhat forced. “A modern Robin Hood?” 

He moved a piece and looked up at Flambeau with an expression very like apology in his eyes. At once, Flambeau softened. They neither of them liked fighting, past the point where it was fun. Strange as it would have seemed a few years ago, the priest was perhaps the most significant presence in Flambeau’s life. Where he’d once tried to goad Brown into giving his soul up for lost, he now feared, with every argument gone too far, achieving just that.

And so, with a smirk, he replied, “You should see me in tights.”

“I’m sure you cut a very fine figure,” said Brown. He was sincere by nature, but if Flambeau let himself be pitiful for a moment, he could almost imagine that Brown really meant it.

Brown’s smile widened, deepening the crows’ feet around his eyes. Flambeau felt an urge to reach across the table, to trace his thumb gently along those lines that tallied a million gentle smiles. He tamped it down as he always did, used by now to the affectionate buzz beneath his skin. That had been another surprising shift since the beginning of their acquaintance; Flambeau would have laughed, once, at the thought of his being attracted to a man so homely, so wholesome, and, on the surface, so unexciting. He would say--if there was anyone to say it to, if there could ever be anyone to say it to--it was the draw of the forbidden, which had motivated him throughout his life. He always did want what he wasn’t allowed to have. But perhaps the truth, even less admittable, was simply that Father Brown was the best man Flambeau had ever known, and falling in love with him was something of an inevitability.

“What about you?” Flambeau asked rather abruptly. He needed a distraction from his throughts, and chess certainly wasn’t keeping him occupied. Brown had just taken his second bishop. “What would you be, if not a priest?”

Brown considered his answer while he sipped his wine, squinting up at the ceiling and then back down at the board. “Not very different, I think. A quiet life, where I could help people and serve God. It’s all I’ve ever asked.” He was, as always, the very picture of humble Catholic contentedness.

“A beautiful wife and a horde of children?” guessed Flambeau, for form’s sake. He knew the answer before Brown, unhesitatingly, shook his head. Of course it wasn’t something he advertised, and with his vocation it was a moot point in any case, but Flambeau was good at picking up on such things. They’d never openly discussed it, but each knew that the other knew. “But...someone, perhaps?”

Brown met his eyes again, and Flambeau suddenly feared he’d revealed too much. Intellectually, he knew he couldn’t have; he was damn good at keeping his feelings off his face. But anyone who’d ever been a child in a confessional shared a certainty that priests could read their guilty thoughts, and Flambeau had one or two that were very guilty indeed. _If you weren’t a priest, if I weren’t a thief, if there weren’t jail sentences and chemical treatments for thinking these things…_

The draw of the forbidden. The delicious agony of wanting something you could never even ask for.

The white queen clicked down on a new square, several steps diagonal from the black king. “Check,” Brown announced proudly. How he’d failed to notice Flambeau’s rook a few spaces away, Flambeau didn’t know, but his face fell comically when Her Majesty was supplanted by a tower. He worried his lip as he surveyed the ever-depleting battlefield, the troops who must soldier on without hope of reinforcements.

The thoughtful silence ticked on, until Flambeau supposed that his last question was to be forgotten. However, after Brown settled on a pawn to place, he answered, slowly and deliberately, “Perhaps someone.”

“You must get lonely.” He’d asked that, once, and Brown had answered that he always had God for company. Flambeau thought they were a little more honest with each other, now.

“Yes.” It was nice to be right, but he was too distracted by the way Brown was looking at him to gloat. “But rather less these days, with you here.”

There wasn’t much to say to that which wouldn’t dangerously compromise Flambeau’s carefully constructed persona, so he didn’t intend to say anything. He intended to sit quietly and let the conversation move on. He intended to let the evening wind down, and to be back here tomorrow. He intended, for once in his life, not to push a boundary or grab for more than he already had.

He didn’t intend to say, very nearly tenderly and a good deal too openly, “I’m glad.” And he certainly didn’t intend for Brown to reach out, to lay his hand on Flambeau’s arm, to ask, “Hercule, may I kiss you?”

Flambeau froze. 

He stared. He knew he must be hearing things. All he could hear now was his own heart, suddenly racing like he was in danger. He felt as if he was. 

“What did you say?” he asked, when he could remember how.

“I said, may I kiss you?” Brown repeated. He wore the same easy smile he had the first time he’d asked. His eyes held the same disarming fondness. His hand was still where he’d placed it on Flambeau’s forearm, still sure and certain, still gently asking permission.

Flambeau’s mouth was dry as a desert, in contrast to his lungs’ insistence that he was underwater. He licked his lips, and rasped out, “Kiss me?”

“Yes.” Brown’s hopeful, easy expression turned to confusion and then to dismay as he searched Flambeau’s face for any affirmation. Flambeau was still caught in place behind the unreadable mask he always fell back on, and could only blink stupidly. The color rapidly drained from Brown’s face. “Are you--I thought… Oh dear.”

He withdrew his hand like Flambeau’s arm was aflame, and at last Flambeau could move.

“No!” He hadn’t meant to shout, and Brown flinched at the volume. He jerked forward to grab at the retreating hand, scattering chess pieces with his elbow, and Brown flinched again. Of course he was making a mess of this, Flambeau thought, furiously. The suave, the debonair Flambeau, rendered as clumsy as a foal by the village priest.

“No,” he tried again, softly. He cradled Brown’s hand in both of his, as carefully as if it was a Faberge egg. Actually, the last one of those he’d had, he’d been none too gentle with: a tacky, tasteless gilt bauble. He held Brown’s hand like it was something far more precious.

Brown, however, seemed not to notice his care. He was staring down at the spoiled chess game, breathing fast and tremulous. “I’m sorry, I was obviously mistaken. Please, just forget--”

“I will do no such thing,” Flambeau interrupted. It didn’t come naturally to him to be soothing, but he at least kept his tone light, as disaffected as if they were chatting about the unseasonably warm weather they’d been having. Brown looked up at him, and the abject fear in his face made Flambeau’s heart ache.

“You surprised me.” _Like you always manage to,_ he didn’t add. It was impossible that Brown, with all his gifts of observation and reasoning, hadn’t noticed his own uncanny ability to get past Flambeau’s defenses. From the first, Brown had had an advantage over him that Flambeau never seemed able to eliminate. It was a vulnerability that terrified him. Brown would never exploit it in a manner meant to harm him, never dream of doing so; Flambeau’s certainty on that score frightened him still more.

Seconds passed in uncertain silence, as they waited on each other. Brown’s fingers twitched in his grasp. At last Brown whispered, “Then…?”

Flambeau nodded, but couldn’t leave it at that. He was a man of action, a daring criminal; how could he simply sit passively and let Brown lead him? He gripped Brown’s hand tighter, to hide the shaking of his own, and pulled him closer. Brown closed his eyes tightly, as though bracing himself. Flambeau watched his face as he leaned over the chessboard to press their lips together.

It was…

Terrible.

They both practically vibrated with tension. Their noses bumped clumsily, and when Flambeau tilted his head, Brown’s spectacles jabbed him in the cheekbone. He pulled back, to try again, and accidentally kissed Brown’s chin. Brown’s lips ended up almost on his nostril. It was the worst kiss Flambeau had been a part of since he was fifteen.

They both leaned back to stare at each other, aghast. Brown’s free hand came up to cover his mouth. And then, to Flambeau’s astonishment, he burst into laughter.

“Oh, it wasn’t that bad,” Flambeau protested, indignant. Brown’s giggling was infectious, however, and in a moment Flambeau was grinning. In another, they were both doubled over, unable to quiet their shared laughter.

“Oh dear,” Brown said again, when the torrent had abated. He removed his spectacles to wipe tears from his eyes, still chuckling. “Not quite what I’d been hoping for.”

“You looked about to bolt,” said Flambeau, shaking his head. He began righting the scattered chess pieces, though he suspected that they’d both run out of attention to pay the game that evening.

Father Brown shook his head right back, lining up his neat row of white pawns. “No more than you did, when I asked.”

If Flambeau was blushing, he could only pray that the low light of the study would hide it. “Well, it isn’t every day that a priest tells you his plans to seduce you,” he defended himself, and reached for the glass of wine he’d left unattended.

“I don’t believe I said ‘seduce,’” Brown said with a teasing lilt. He folded his hands on the table, watching Flambeau with the guileless sincerity which had proved his undoing so many times already. With perfect frankness, he asked, “Does it bother you, my being a priest?”

A wine glass was a very poor palisade, but Flambeau hid behind it as well as he could. It soon became clear that Brown wouldn’t stop _looking_ at him, however slowly he sipped his claret.

“A little,” he was forced to admit, swirling the dregs and paying very close attention to how the light caught on the liquid, “but I’ll get over it soon enough. It’s been a long time since I was a Catholic of any standing.” Brown nodded, understanding and almost sympathetic. Curiosity, and a tendency to prickle under discomfort, drove Flambeau to inquire, “Doesn’t it bother you?”

Brown visibly hesitated before answering. He avoided Flambeau’s eyes, and picked up a chess piece to turn over in his hands. Perhaps by accident, he selected a bishop. “No,” he said quietly, stroking his thumb over the carved boxwood. “Not as much as it should.”

Not very long ago, Flambeau would have delighted in the admission: the moralizing priest, a liar and a hypocrite. But that was before he’d really known Brown, when he was convinced that no one could be as altruistic, kind, and forgiving as Brown purported to be. He’d once thought, too, that Brown’s vocation must make him blind to the flaws of his church, the politics and abuses, but he’d since learned otherwise. Whatever might be perpetrated by other clergymen, Brown was what he was because he loved his God and his flock, and wanted to serve them. He was no hypocrite.

Softly, Flambeau prompted, “You took a vow.”

Brown raised his eyes, scrutinizing Flambeau’s face. Flambeau did his best to convey his genuine curiosity; he was in no mood for another argument, even a brief one, and this would certainly not be a debate he wanted to win. Brown renewing his interest in celibacy was the last thing on his mind. He stretched his legs out under the table so that they nudged against Brown’s, hoping it got the message across.

“I could quote St. Paul.” He spoke slowly, assembling his thoughts before pronouncing them, with the same gravity Flambeau had seen during a murder investigation. “In the book of Corinthians, he tells us that celibacy is a gift that some possess, but not everyone. A vocation, like the priesthood, though separate. The choice to be celibate should therefore be that--a choice--as much as choosing to be a priest. Not a condition of the priesthood. I could say that celibacy is not a gift that I posses, though I’m not sure that would be true. I’ve managed it so far, and I...think I could keep it up.

“I could also make a historical reference. St. Peter was married, and so were many of the early clergy. The Orthodox church allows its priests to marry, and of course Protestants do as well. Perhaps my church is the one in the wrong. Celibacy is meant to make us closer to Christ, but does it truly? Isn’t marriage itself a sacrament? Wiser heads than mine have pondered it.” He gave a little self-deprecating shrug, and Flambeau refrained from defending the wisdom of Brown’s head. Now wasn’t quite the time.

“But you don’t sound convinced by any of that,” he observed. The clock on the mantle struck the hour. Normally, that would be his cue to say goodnight, to head back to his little rented cottage at the edge of town, but not tonight.

Brown shrugged, setting down the bishop and rising. Flambeau would have followed him to his feet, but Brown touched his shoulder to stop him. He wasn’t going far at all; only to the desk to retrieve the bottle of wine. He brushed his hand over Flambeau’s shoulder again as the passed back, and Flambeau caught the hand to press it there, just for a moment. Brown smiled down at him, warm and gentle and beautiful in a way Flambeau didn’t have words for.

Suddenly quite overwhelmed with affection, Flambeau brought Brown’s hand up in order to brush a kiss across his knuckles. It surprised an embarrassed chuckle out of Brown, whose ears were pink as he sat back down.

“The truth is,” Brown resumed, refilling both of their glasses, “it doesn’t matter what justification there might be to allow priests--or myself, specifically--to marry. If I could get a special dispensation from the pope, it wouldn’t make any difference.”

“Because you’re homosexual?”

He nodded. When Flambeau set his glass down, Brown reached over the table to cover Flambeau’s hand with his own. There was a frustrated furrow in his brow, which looked completely out of place on his normally tranquil features. “I wouldn’t be allowed this, vows or no vows. The law forbids it, as well as the church, for everyone. Some would say that God does as well.”

Flambeau turned his hand over to clasp Brown’s reassuringly. “You don’t believe that.”

If he did--and Flambeau knew, firsthand, how pervasive Catholic guilt could be, on top of societal condemnation--Flambeau would find whatever means necessary to convince him otherwise. Flambeau himself might have no faith in God, but Brown’s faith sustained him, and any god who proved unworthy of his devotion was due a reckoning. The only higher power worth believing in was the loving, forgiving one for whom Father Brown spoke.

“How can I?” Brown exclaimed, with surprising heat. “How could I serve a God who would punish me for this? For love? There is so much evil in the world, and so much pain. I've seen the most senseless murders. People who are vicious, and cruel, who look for ways to hurt others. I served in two wars that made Dante’s infernal circles sound like a children’s story. I won’t believe that the people we love could make us somehow _deserve_ to suffer that way.”

He’d begun in righteous indignation, but gradually retreated back to his usual soft-spoken conviction. He squeezed Flambeau’s hand gently. “I don’t believe that God would be offended by this. But the law, and society, is. The fate of my soul is up to Him, but my body is left to less charitable judges. Celibacy was forced on me before I ever took a vow. I could never have married the person I loved, or had a family. Perhaps if I could have, I still would have chosen the life I did. I’ll never know what my choice would have been if I’d every truly _had_ one. 

“I’m not much of a...fornicator,” he added, making a face at his own turn of phrase. “It’s been a long time since I've even been tempted. I would probably have gone the rest of my life without, were it not…. I care very deeply for you.” He peeked up shyly at Flambeau over the top of his spectacles, as though there could be any doubt that his feelings were reciprocated. Flambeau met his eyes and, for once, made no effort to disguise his own emotions. He was rewarded by Brown’s ears going bright red again.

“And I certainly don’t make the choice lightly. I’ve been considering this a very long time, and it would take something very important for me to break my vow.”

“I'm flattered,” Flambeau interrupted, covering up how touched he truly was with his usual sarcastic tone. Brown gave him a look that was equally fond and exasperated. 

“But, at the risk of sounding petulant, my vows were hardly fair. My right to marriage was taken from me before I gave it away. So I think there might be some consideration due as to the binding nature of those vows. I think, perhaps, there might be room for interpretation.”

He looked uncertain, and a little guilty. Flambeau suspected that he was rethinking his own motives; questioning whether he’d presented a valid argument, or whether he’d just come up with an excuse to do something he shouldn’t. Did he have a defensible position, or was he just a man like any man, wanting?

Flambeau was certainly no theologian, but he did know that there was no one who more deserved to be happy than the man in front of him, who’d dedicated his entire life to helping everyone that he could. Even if he wanted this for the most selfish reasons, Flambeau thought that God could forgive him for it. Hell, as far as Flambeau was concerned, God owed Brown this. There had to be some allowances made for saints, after all.

Flambeau pressed Brown’s hand again, then let go to pick up his wine glass. “Very well,” he said with exaggerated nonchalance, pushing his chair back and resting his heels on the table beside the chess board. He held his glass aloft like a Hollywood poseur, knowing that his theatrical show of insouciance would amuse Brown. He was happy to see the pensive look banished by a smile that crinkled the corners of Brown’s eyes. In a still more dramatic tone, he went on, “You’ve made a convincing argument. You may seduce me.”

“I never said ‘seduce,’” Brown protested again, struggling against a grin that would--and did--go straight to Flambeau’s head. Brown smiled easily, and at everyone, but there was no one else who could make Brown smile quite like that.

“No?”

Flambeau stood up, setting down his wine and prowling around to the other side of the table. Brown turned in his seat as Flambeau laid one hand on the table, and with the other, gripped the back of Brown’s chair. The priest looked quite unperturbed at being so boxed in, gazing up boldly even as Flambeau leaned in, menacingly close. Had there ever been a time when Flambeau had intimidated him? Likely not, and now there was no chance of it at all. Brown knew him far too well to be in the least afraid.

“Then I suppose I shall have to do all the work myself. As usual.”

It went much better, the second time around.

**Author's Note:**

> The theft discussed at the beginning is in "The Queer Feet," one of the stories from _The Innocence of Father Brown_ by G.K. Chesterton. 
> 
> The verse in Corinthians that Father Brown references is 1 Corinthians 7:7: "Indeed, I wish everyone to be as I am, but each has a particular gift from God, one of one kind and one of another."


End file.
